Wednesday, March 26, 2014

ANNOUNCEMENT: "Suits", Spooks, and Monterey Institute of International Studies

HARVEY: What are your choices when someone puts a gun to your head?MIKE: What are you talking about? You do what they say or they shoot you.HARVEY: WRONG. You take the gun, or you pull out a bigger one. Or, you call their bluff. Or, you do any one of a hundred and forty six other things.- Harvey Specter and Mike Ross, Suits (Season one)

Ten days ago I was faced with too few registrations 30 days in advance of Suits and Spooks San Francisco. After multiple failed attempts to generate interest from my InfoSec contacts, I began to entertain the possibility that I wasn't going to attract enough registrations to warrant holding the event. Fortunately, as a die-hard "Suits" fan, I knew better! There are never just two options to consider, and there was no way that I was going to pull the plug on this event. I just had to "do any of 146 other things." Which I did. And with fantastic results.

Effective immediately, Suits and Spooks San Francisco is now Suits and Spooks Monterey; to be hosted by the Cyber Security Initiative at the Monterey Institute of International Studies (MIIS) where 18 or more speakers from Ukraine, Russia, Great Britain, Estonia and the United States will discuss the current Crimean crisis and global security risks to critical infrastructure on April 17-18 at Irvine Auditorium.

Dr. Itamara Lochard, the director of the Cyber Security Initiative and Dr. Amy Sands, MIIS' provost, have enthusiastically embraced the Suits and Spooks conference model as well as our Russia-Ukraine focus.

In retrospect, the lack of interest from one group has opened the door to an incredible opportunity not only for this event in April but for future collaborative events with the MIIS Cyber Security Initiative!